Category Archives: personal

I don’t know if I’m the only one who feels this, or if it’s simply because of the people around me, but I’m constantly stressed out and frustrated when it comes to taking time off to do art. I’m not a full time artist, I’m not even a professional artist, and I don’t have the money to pay for art school, but I’m still in love with drawing, so the only way for me to improve is to take personal time to practice drawing. Ultimately I’d like to one day make drawing and illustrating my profession, but in order to get there I have to push myself to do a lot of work first.

I’m not certain that many people are familiar with the fact that drawing is fucking hard, and that it’s also a skill that you have to build on. Just like any skill, it takes a long time to perfect it, and even at a high level there are still things to learn and new things to do, and all of this can be achievable with a lot of practice at drawing the same things over and over again in order to get a simple gesture or a simple strand of hair the way that you want. Art is also very organic, and sometimes mistakes can lead to unique new quirks in a character design or a painting, but there would never be any mistakes to be made IF I NEVER HAD THE TIME TO DO ART IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Starting to get mad just thinking about it.

When people hear that I’ve been drawing, they expect a finished product, which usually I don’t have because when I say I’m drawing, I’m usually practising drawing a character or a costume or a pose. None of these ever get finished because they’re quick drawings where I try to capture the essence of what I’m trying to draw.

When people hear that I’m practising drawing, sometimes I get the, “I thought you knew how to draw” face. Just because I CAN doesn’t mean I’m GOOD ENOUGH SHUT YOUR FACE.

Sometimes people forget that I have to draw as much as I can as often as I can, and that I have to be drawing every single day to improve on my skill. It’s like learning to play a sport or even learning how to play Star Craft. I need as much practice as I can, and the thing with drawing is that after I learn how to draw one thing, there will ALWAYS BE ANOTHER FUCKING THING TO LEARN TO DRAW. But instead of going to a gym or taking lessons, I’m sitting at home with my headphones in hunched over a pile of papers, so obviously people don’t take that seriously when they assume that I’m free ALL THE FUCKING TIME BECAUSE ALL I DO AT HOME IS DOODLE LIKE A CHILD, especially since I haVE NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT AT THE END OF 5 FUCKING HOURS so OF COURSE I CAN DICK AROUND ALL THE TIME GO FUCK YOURSELF.

I think the biggest underlying problem with this is the fact that what I do is not connected to any institution, and therefore nothing I do on my own free time is significant enough to respect as a serious thing. I do not go to school, so I cannot tell people I’m drawing for homework. I do not work for anyone, so I cannot tell people I have to meet a deadline. I work basically for myself, and more or less for volunteer, and when it comes to that kind of art work people tend not to take the amount of effort involved very seriously.

But when it comes down to it I care about what I do a lot, or to be more accurate, I care about what I want to do a lot. Now that I’ve begun working on a project again, I’m trying not to get distracted by other things, but at the same time I can’t focus on that work constantly. Sometimes I need to take a break, and there is where another problem arises.

People see me when I’m taking a break because when I’m working I never socialize and when I take a break from it I tend to interact with people more often, so everyone only remembers the “me” that is not working, therefore I must not work. It’s the same fucked up parent logic whenever they burst into your room without knocking and catches you taking a break from your homework and assumes that you’ve been taking a break the entire time they were not in your room.

In conclusion GET LEARNED FIRST BEFORE YOU FUCKING TAKE A SHIT ON OTHER PEOPLE’S PASSIONS, SHOW SOME FUCKING RESPECT.

After every big movie comes out in theatres there will always be sensationalist articles critiquing the movie, pulling on one or two loose strands in hopes that the entire fabric of reality comes undone. I read one for Godzilla when I came out and I’m ashamed to say that for a few minutes while reading it I actually began to dislike the movie, and then I remembered how I felt while I watched the movie: awestruck. Of course the movie wasn’t perfect, but that didn’t stop me from liking it. These troll articles are clever in their use of controversial subject matter to over-hype something and make the worst out of it. They like to throw the feminist card in there to get people riled up, and when read out of context, or if you haven’t seen the movie yourself, it might even make a lot of sense. They will complain when there aren’t enough female leads in the movie, and when it does live up to the gender equality standard they will complain that the women weren’t “well written”. Even if these women were three-dimensional, emotional characters there will always be something wrong with them, something wrong with the way they were portrayed. As if they were the authority on writing women. Other tactics include insulting the naming tactics for the characters, poking gently at possible racism and using a director’s past work to undermine him. Some of it can be reasonable (doesn’t mean that it is), but most of it is exaggerated way out of proportion.

When it comes to critiques I much prefer this:

So I watched Interstellar yesterday with a couple of friends, and I thought it was a great movie. I thought what they tried to achieve with the plot did not warrant harsh scrutiny in terms of science, because this was not a space documentary. This is a fictional movie, and it might that mean I don’t have standards when it come to movies, but all I was looking for from this movie was to be entertained, not to be educated. And I was. To be honest, the trailer did not intrigue me at all, so I was pleasantly surprised. I walked out of the movie really wanting to play Mass Effect. The plot twist at the end was corny and familiar, and glorified human capabilities. I had the same wariness for the trust that the universe places in humanity as I did when I watched The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)(which I did not like mainly for that reason), but that is understandable.

Of course when I read “The 7 biggest problems with Interstellar” I was immediately aware from past experiences that this was what I am going to coin as a “Troll Article”, which I guess could be classified under sensationalist journalism. It was not a real critique of the movie, it was shameless and desperate bashing. I was ready to write another post another article about how mad those posts make me, because apparently that is what this blog has become, but halfway through thinking about that I changed my mind. I realized that instead of watching the movie and never thinking about it again, this article impassioned me again into using my brain. Were the women poorly written? I didn’t think so, or at least I didn’t notice. Were there plot holes? Unfortunately. Did the dystopian world make sense? I didn’t see enough of it to form a conclusion, but it doesn’t matter because that’s not really what the movie is about. And ultimately, did I like the movie? Yes. It was intense, and I was stressed out through a lot of it, but I liked it. And I’m much more aware of my reasons for liking it now and can defend my position.

I’d like to say that this was a wonderful world where people look out for each other and Troll Articles are written to elicit critical thinking. That would be a glass-half-full type of assumption to make, and I’m not an optimist if I can help it. And even if these articles were written for that purpose there will always be people out there that will miss the point, unless clearly written out for them. I guess my point then, would be to think about troll articles even if they are infuriating. Like my rant last week, I had to actually stop and think about why the article was making me mad before I could put it into words and turn it into a post, and I didn’t write it in order to open the OP’s eyes. I didn’t want to change his mind, because I have come to understand that many people have closed their minds so firmly that they can’t even understand their own behaviour. I wrote it for my own benefit, to understand my own mind, and for the benefit for people who have kept their minds open, have yet to think about the issue.

It’s very loud in my head, and the noise is very distracting. I forget things easily, I lose track of things easily. When I’m writing I could go on a tangent and forget my original point effortlessly. I’m an introvert, so I internalize almost all the stimuli around me, and that’s why there are so many thoughts. When I’m aware of them I feel like my head will burst, and maybe if that happens it might be a relief to exist without a physical body. Then I would be something completely different.

Music helps me focus. I guess it’s my Adderall. It narrows down my range of emotions down to the emotions expressed in the song, and while the song is playing, I work less at keeping those emotions on the surface, the same emotions that would sink to the bottom in competition with my many other fleeting thoughts.

But this isn’t a world where being able to feel something counts as productive. I would need to be able to express those emotions. Unfortunately my ability to feel has surpassed my ability to express. Maybe the reason why I feel so heavy is because my body has dammed up things that should have been allowed to flow freely. For whatever reason I have been too caught up with the event of feeling, and did not give enough importance to translating those feelings.

Perhaps because I felt that no one would care? Or because I felt that I might be ridiculed?

Even as I’m writing this I am being used by the words that I’m speaking with. Because thoughts are not the same medium as words, the act of expressing myself is an act of translation, and my vocabulary has restricted the spectrum of ideas I am able to express. You don’t know the degree of jealousy and respect I feel towards the people who have gained the ability to translate their thoughts with grace and elegance, into both written and oral language.

Because I think when a notion first appears to you it appears as a feeling, an emotion, like intuition and as you become more aware of it you begin to formulate this notion into words. I wish someone would teach me how to do this with skill because maybe after I’ve learned how to do this it wouldn’t be so chaotic inside my head.

But does the chaos originate from my thoughts or from somewhere less logical?

I thought this blog was meant to be a place of liberation, but somehow I’ve manage to make my words heavier than my physical body.

This isn’t right.

Where can my thoughts go to be by itself, free from my flesh, but still able to have material?

Maybe WordPress is just too professional a setting for my fleeting thoughts. It’s so concrete, and I am fickle.

[Insert long philosophical sigh] I guess I’m still not sure who I am yet, or I am in that ridiculously awkward phase of transition. A work in progress indeed (although that is no longer relevant since my blog is no longer called a work in progress. I think I’m going to go change it back).

After I climbed out of that pit that was 2011 I don’t really like to gripe about how shitty life is because I have rediscovered things in life that I want to do again, but because of school I actually wish I was dead so I don’t have to deal with it.

I’ve pinpointed a sign of relapse into the “bad place”, and that’s an unquenchable thirst to play games. This is actually how I dealt with the Bad Year. Gaming provides “cheap thrills” while wasting a lot of time that I cannot afford, especially when I need to be working on other stuff. There was a period of time at the end of summer 2012 when I was so motivated to work on my personal projects that there was no need for “cheap thrills”. I had absolutely no desire to play any kind of games whatsoever, because there was something more productive out there that is both rewarding and exciting for me to do.

Now that I find myself tormented by academic obligations, the warning symptoms are slowly beginning to creep up on me.

I keep saying that I’ll stop ranting about school, because school is something that I have to get through, and complaining is counter productive, but when it comes down to it, school is just not a place where I thrive. It’s slowly eating me alive and making me hate everything.

But I’m not saying school is wrong. There are people who are masters at it, people who are more patient, more tolerant, and have greater abilities of undergoing hardships, and even people who have moved past it and are able to utilize school for their own means; people who are natural geniuses, who are tuned into the academic frequency. I’m just saying it’s just not right for me.

So what do I do?

I’ve found motivations for life, for happiness and for the creative processes. I’ve been trying to find motivations for school, and every now and then I think I’ve honed in on one, because although I believe I’m mostly self-sufficient in most other aspects of life, I am heavily reliant on inspirators as a motivational force.

Perhaps the inspiration comes from a certain text that I have to read, or from a professor, or a fellow student, but the inspiration is short-lived. In the end my degree of not caring is greater than the inspiration. Is this possibly because I am in a major that I don’t thoroughly enjoy? I should wish that it was, but I’ve explored many fields of my faculty (the only faculty in which I believe I belong: Arts). For visual arts I felt that a grading system was pointless and the students pretentious, and I was creatively blocked for a year by taking creative writing courses because of the narrow style the program focused on. At a basic level, PSYC is the only department that I have an affinity for, but regardless of how much I like it, I simply do not excel in an academic environment.

Does this sound like I’m making excuses for being stupid? Maybe. I certain feel stupid when I’m on campus. I also feel a lot of pressure from people that assume my loyalty to academia because of my enrolment in university.

What am I even talking about any more? I have a midterm and a presentation tomorrow, and I would like to sleep before midnight, but I don’t see that happening.

But by writing this I’m not trying to come to any solutions or concrete answers. What I’m going through isn’t an object problem that could be solved, it’s more of a subjective, internal dilemma that will probably continue until I’m done with school. Talking about it like this just makes me feel better, most of the time.

Then why post it on a blog instead of writing it down in a journal somewhere if I’m not looking for answers? I guess it’s a natural narcissistic tendency. It makes me feel better to imagine that perhaps someone might read this and that might ignite a certain train of thought in them, and that I was responsible for that spark of internal monologue. It’s not like I’m really expecting something truly profound to happen, it is just helpful to imagine it.

That’s how I am motivated most of the time. A = something that I want to one day achieve. B = a source of inspiration (could be unrelated or related), either a person, a piece of artwork or an event. C = the potential of what could be in relation to B if I achieve A. I don’t know why I used letters to substitute those things, because there isn’t really any formula that happens. I guess A + B creates C in my mind, which creates D the motivation which might make A true some day. I don’t think I’m making any sense.

An example would be: A = I want a ferret. A source of inspiration (B) could be a person with a cool ferret. C would be dreaming that if I had a ferret, then I could go to the cool ferret conference and meet that cool ferret. D would be the motivation which will make me work for the money to buy the ferret, which might render C true in a universe where there are cool ferret conferences.

Going to the Linkin Park concert felt like closure. The band is like an old boyfriend who I regret leaving. He has changed, not for the worse, not for the better, but in a way that I am capable of understanding but don’t really want to understand, so I’ve been holding on, hoping that maybe some day I’ll turn around, that some day I’ll see, or that maybe one day everything will all be explained to me, like in some cheesy movie.

I don’t feel changed after the concert, not changed in the way that is dramatic and life-altering. The concert was one last connection. If anything, everything remained the same after the concert, that LP had changed and that I had changed; we’d both grown in different directions, but after the concert it just felt more okay than before.

Hearing them play live, seeing them in person right in front of me was like a metaphor for change. They are still the same band, with the same members, playing the same instruments, and despite all their new songs, the old ones are still with them, marking the path that they had taken, the path that I followed them down for a certain time, and no matter how many new albums they release, those songs will still be there, and Chester will still rip the stadium apart with his heart-stopping screams.

If you think about it in terms of a person, how much can someone really change? I don’t listen much to rock now, I’m investing my time in completely different genres, but when it comes down to it, I still love those old songs. There is a park of me that is still the same person that I had been before, the part that played a Linkin Park album on repeat for hours on end, first listening to the song, then to each individual instrument, breaking the song down, and that won’t ever change, no matter how many new tastes I acquire.

And as a final memento, I picked up a souvenir at the concert that was quite unexpected, like a small, personal, parting gift.

Overall I think I handled that break-up pretty well, don’t you? 😉

In all seriousness I still fully support Linkin Park, just not in the way that I used to. And I still can’t believed they opened with Faint.

So I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and talk about 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James. Ironically, opinions about this book are rather black and white, and I am going to be one of those people who are on the rather negative side.

Before I start, I would like to congratulate E.L. James on publishing a fan fiction made up of what used to be the worst thing that happened to literature and her own fantasies, which, being what they are, should’ve been kept inside her head. And I lied about not starting yet, because I would like to dive right into it: Hide yo kids, hide yo wife, because E.L. James’ fantasies are raping erryone’s brains out there. Unfortunately it’s not rape if you enjoy it, and to be very harsh, the worst thing about this book is that people like it. Well not the worst, because there are many things about 50 Shades of Grey that are the worst, like being the fastest selling paper back since Harry Potter. Those two things shouldn’t even be in the same universe, let alone the same sentence.

Usually I like to have pictures and videos dispersed throughout my post that relates to the topic, but the topic causes me so much physical pain that I’m just going to leave this video here that has two things that I love: cats, and Ellen.

To be completely honest, I have never read the book myself, and I don’t even read erotica, which makes my points less credible and I just sound like someone who’s on the bandwagon of being pissed off at something that a lot of people are pissed off at. I’m also not even famous, and I’ve never published an entire book, so that makes me even less trustworthy, but there are some things that might help:

Sweaters For Days and Moves Like Jagger: A blog by writer Jennifer Armintrout, with this part specifically dedicated to 50 shades of grey recaps, and no I’m no longer going to be italicizing the book or capitalizing it because it’s really just a fanfic.

And here is a video by Alex Day of Chameleon Circuit on the same topic, in which he makes some excellent points:

I don’t want to publish this post riding (haha that’s an unintentional pun that makes me want to vomit slightly) on the words of other, funnier, and more successful people than me, so I will say that from my perspective as a prospective writer, I am terrified that this is allowed to be a published book! I would be completely fine with it if it was this incredibly popular fan fiction, but that it stayed free and stayed online, but now it’s clogging up our bookstores, taking up the top sellers list, like so:

What has happened to the world of reading? The entire trilogy of E.L. James’ fantasies are in the top two of Chapter’s most popular books, and there’s definitely something not quite right with that. Might I also point out that in 10th place is a boxed set of the Hunger Games trilogy, all of which have already made their appearance in the top 10? There should be some sort of rules with what they put on these shelves.

Just for a measure of what the entire top seller’s list is like at Chapters:

#12: this isn’t even a book.

#14: …

Again, RULES.

I guess instead of a specific rant on 50 shades, this is just a post about how little hope I have left for humanity. I am sitting here with a choice. I could either choose good, and write real literature, with original characters, conveying an actual story about issues that I see around me in the world. This will require hard work, research, days of pulling my hair out and crying myself to sleep and getting rejected by publisher after publisher before I actually get anywhere. On the other hard I could choose evil, and write what I know people want to read just so I can get my hands on some cash and a lot of fame, and expand boundaries of acceptable social conduct, creating chaos within homes, and breaking the shackles holding back the monsters that live within each of us. And I won’t care if people hate me because I’ll be so rich I won’t hear the hate through my soundproof mansion made up of wads of cash.

So in conclusion E.L. James wants to take over the world with an army of masochistic, sadistic, horny animals created through subtle subliminal messaging.

for fear of my own personal safety.

Should I remind you that she has two teenage sons? Highschool is already tough enough …

My YTF story is nothing spectacular, and if anything, it’s altogether predictable, but if YTF has taught me anything, it is that I, as an individual, matter, and that by believing in myself and my choices, I will amount to something.

A year ago this time, I had nothing going for me. I was lonely, insecure, feeling useless and unloved. Everything around me was falling apart, and the people around me kept leaving me behind. Between my parents, who had been separated for eight years, I would never stop being the middle-man. What I learned from that experience was that according to the other, each of them was a terrible person. I grew up loving my parents, not as a couple, but separately as people, and hearing them talk about each other in such a hateful way tore me apart, not because of their resentment, but because I was old enough to realize that what they were saying weren’t complete exaggerations. My parents weren’t the perfect, loving people that I had modelled myself after as I grew up. They were flawed, filled with resentment and deep seated anger towards each other.

And perhaps because of this I developed a pretty severe hatred toward all people. It got to my head that in reality, in everyone there was hatred, a person who is selfish and ugly. Most of all, I hated myself, because I was the product of this hatred as a result of having been raised by my parents. If gold rusts, then what will iron do?

But YTF changed my perspective. When I watched their videos, I laughed, because, well they’re hilarious, awesome people, I cried, because they had come so far and worked so hard. Their message reminded me that I was not a person as a result of outside forces that influenced me, but as a result of the paths I chose to take despite of those forces. Timing and circumstance were completely out of my control, but they create the opportunity of choice. Slowly, I began to thaw, and I began to want to like people, love people, because it is a good feeling.

For many years, I tried to focused on myself, because caring about other people hurt too much, but because of YTF I began to see value in others, my peers, my friends, my family, and most importantly my parents. I loved the happiness that YTF brought me every time I watched their videos, and slowly I began to have the desire to bring happiness to other people myself. On the last night of 2011, I made a resolution that in 2012, I would be nicer and friendlier to all the people I came in contact with. Every time I go out ot hang out my friends, I set a goal to make them laugh at least once.

March 23rd, 2012 in Vancouver BC I had the great honour to be able to see YTF live in concert. I wasn’t able to get any VIP tickets to meet them, but it still meant the world to be able to see them on stage.

I’m still a work in progress, but I am willing to work hard. If I can work half as hard as any member of YTF has, I know I can make a big change in my life.

Thanks so much, YTF for being amazing. Keep doing what you do!

Do you have your own YTF Story?

Check out http://myytfstory.tumblr.com/ and if you’ve got some time on your hands and feel up to sharing, you can submit your own YTF Story and read the stories of other YTF fans. The creator of the blog will tweet YTF about the fan site once she reaches 50 submissions as a way of showing YTF how much they’ve inspired their fans. Let them know how much you love them!